Swap space was originally used when systems had what we would today consider puny RAM--often 64 to 256 MB or so. For those systems, it often enabled running things that could not be run comfortably without Swap.
In those days, the rule of thumb was to make the swap space twice the size of your RAM. More than that didn't seem to make much difference.
Those running 4 GB or more of RAM need little if any swap for ordinary operations (other than hibernation, perhaps).
If you have sixty or eighty gigs (or more) of hard disk for your system, why worry about *reducing* an existing swap partition--or increasing it either, for that matter?
As for high memory use--it is not uncommon, since some processes may use most if not all available memory to get maximum performance.
One thing to consider is why to "upgrade" a distro to begin with. That can, at times, leave considerable cruft on a system.
Instead, if you separate your disk so your /home directory is in its own partition, when you upgrade a version you can nuke the root partition itself without disturbing your custom settings, and have a clean install of the distro itself. The trick lies in learning what size you need to make the respective partitions.
I dual boot my laptop because of some apps that won't run in WINE that I occasionally need, so I keep XP around. I start it maybe once a week at most.
However, I have an entirely separate data partition formatted as NTFS which is where I share many files I access from both Windows and Linux. Thus, my drive has:
* One partition for Windows
* One partition for shared data storage
* One partition for /home
* ONe partition for /
* Swap (in this case, 2 GB and the RAM on this system is 1.5 GB)
* One partition, currently unused, to play with other distros from time to time
My current Linux install is Kubuntu, although I also have both Gnome and Enlightenment installed as alternative window managers with it. Even with all this and with many apps installed, my Linux root partition is only 20 GB--and is far from full.
At one time, I used a single large partition for Linux--but various episodes have taught me that was not so wise. I have had to reinstall Linux several times now--once as a result of operator error, once through what I believe was a problem with EXT4...I am now running EXT3 again until Karmic--which presumably has some occasional glitches fixed.
So far, this is working well enough...although when I replace this laptop next year, I will likely dispense with Windows entirely now that I no longer need it professionally.
I offer all this simply as another look at how things might be done in case you find it useful.
David
--- In LINUX_Newbies@
>
> --- In LINUX_Newbies@
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 18:01, Andrew <andrew@> wrote:
> > > I think I need more swap space. Can I add free space to my swap partition without without destroying the
> > > data partition?
> >
> > What makes you think you need more swap? What are teh specs on the
> > system? What kind of processor, and how much RAM. And again, WHY do
> > you need more swap?
> >
> > Keep Reading...
>
> I think I need more swap because I appear to be running out of free memory.
>
> vmstat 1
> r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo
> 1 0 457504 22116 15400 954332 0 0 0 0
> 0 0 457504 22116 15404 954416 0 0 88 0
>
> root@andrew-
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 3992768 3964224 28544 0 15916 937676
> -/+ buffers/cache: 3010632 982136
> Swap: 4883720 457744 4425976
>
>
> CPU = AMD Phenom II
> Memory = 4 GB DDR3
>
> After looking at the output from free, perhaps I need more RAM. But I wouldn't expect an Opera browser, and World of Warcraft, and nothing else, to eat up all the RAM like that.
>
> Andrew
>
> ============
>
>
> > > I have a 1.5 TB disk, with 650 GB for the OS as sda1, and a 2 GB swap partition as sda5.
> > >
> > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> > > /dev/sda1 * 1 90593 727688241 83 Linux
> > > /dev/sda2 90594 91201 4883760 5 Extended
> > > /dev/sda5 90594 91201 4883728+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
> > >
> > > /etc/fstab
> > > # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
> > > UUID=58cbf81c-
> > > # swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
> > > UUID=2b274bf9-
> > > /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,
> > >
> > > I would think I would boot from the live CD, use fdisk to enlarge sda5, but I don't see an option to add space in the fdisk menu. So what tool would I use for this?
> >
> > parted would let you, and assuming you have the 350GB or so of
> > UNALLOCATED space on that disk that it looks like you do, you could,
> > theoretically at least, stop swap, resize the partition, then restart
> > swap...
> >
> > But again, why do you think you need more swap? What are you running
> > on that system.
>
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